Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: games

What to Play Next?

Posted on by Viljami

I have to face it – I have a huge amount of games in my backlog. I have both physical and digital copies of many games that I haven’t had an opportunity to get into and to play. This is something to discuss about because there are some clearances in some of those game shops right now. I have to bring up Steam. There was recently a query in Pelaaja (a Finnish gaming magazine) about are people actually excited about ongoing clearances. The results were a bit mixed. A lot of people though their backlog is already huge and that they wouldn’t have a chance to play any of these new games that were on sale.

This is somewhat a problem. There are currently so many games that you have to really give a thought about what game you are going to buy next and what game would you play next. At the same time game buyers are looking more and more how games are rated. There is a lot of money involved. This brings it harder and harder to actually spontaneously pick a game that would suit your taste as good as possible.

It’s not that we wouldn’t have any good new games. This year there has already been many hit games released. We have seen titles like Gran Turismo 7 and Elden Ring already this year. I have to also include one thought to this monologue. There are too many games trying to be everything a game can be. I mean that these games are trying to be more than good in just one genre. This turns games into mega games that have everything. I don’t know if this is healthy for gaming scene. At the same time we are seeing more attempts to bring these mega hit games to the audience. Every big player in the game is trying to make the next big hit. Maybe they should try to accomplish something more simpler and not to try to take such a huge bite.

I greatly enjoyed Gran Turismo 7 some months ago. I played it over 30 hours. Other games that I have recently played a lot are NBA 2K22 and Diablo II Resurrected. How many games like this does a regular gamer need yearly? I am good with two to three titles that take a lot of time to complete. So I’m satisfied with 2-3 games yearly that take up something like 30 or 40 hours to complete. I am not able to play every game, and not even every good game, that gets released. As games try to provide everything for everybody this is very problematic. Actually I am satisfied in a good driving game or two, a good sports game, like FIFA or NBA, and maybe an adventure game or some other game that has also some action game features and maybe a goof first person shooter and all this in about a year. That would make my gaming needs for new games satisfied.

What about retro games? I am talking about older games. For these I prefer to pick some interesting titles as new games that I haven’t yet played. Sometimes these games are legendary and sometimes they are just rare and good. Price of retro games has gone up in recent years. But it is good to read reviews and recommendations from YouTube and also from some good news feeds and blogs. I think there is no reason to buy a lot of old games. It’s better to pick the good ones that you really want in your collection. Some games I pick because they give me nostalgia and I have something in my memory about them.

It’s nice to have kind of an network of influential persons, like bloggers, that can share something, be it a picture or a review or just a comment, about games that they like. I personally like reading reviews the most. I don’t like to always look just for the score that game receives. I like to really get an idea of what kind of a game it would be and what kind of an experience it brings. I enjoy also watching videos from YouTube about hunting games from flea markets. There are people that make their living like this. They buy some games cheap and sell them for a bit higher price.

All in all collecting games is a great hobby. I am a bit worried about gathering too many games to my backlog and that I am not able to play all of them. So I have to make compromises all the time. But I can’t help it. There just are too many games out there. I hope I have time to get into at least some of them.

Game & Watch – How Nintendo Got In to Video Game Business

Posted on by Viljami

I watched a video on YouTube about how Nintendo got the idea of producing original Game & Watch devices. I will link the video to the bottom of this blog post. That video inspired me to write this post.

You might not know what Nintendo Game & Watch device is. It reminds a calculator a bit. The idea was born when Gunpei Yokoi, the designer of Game & Watch, and later Game Boy, saw a man traveling in train. The man had a pocket calculator. He was looking very bored and seemed to tap randomly some numbers in his calculator.

Yokoi visioned that Game & Watch would be somewhat a tool to avoid boredom during for example long train trips. Nintendo needed some help to come up with a product like this. So, the design would rely strongly to the technology of pocket calculators. The device had a LCD screen. It was powered with batteries and it featured a D-Pad and some other buttons to control the game.

This was all accomplished in a world that wasn’t yet conquered by Nintendo Entertainment System. We had maybe some Atari 2600’s or something like that in our living rooms but the world and also Nintendo were very different from what it became in the 1980s later.

Game & Watch became very popular. There were several products released by Nintendo between years 1980 to 1991. Of course there was recently two Game & Watch consoles released. I got myself a Zelda one. The other Game & Watch had Super Mario games on it.

I can tell you a bit about my Zelda Game & Watch console. I think it cost about 70 euros. It came with Zelda games that were originally released for NES and Game Boy. It can be charged with a USB-C-cable and it has a good battery. You can see how the game can be controlled from the picture above this blog post.

What Have I Been Playing Recently

Posted on by Viljami

I realized yesterday that it has been already a bit over two weeks from my latest post to this blog. I have been busy with work, game designing and I have also met some friends. I have also played. Actually I have played a lot. I just haven’t had time to sit down and write about it.

Yesterday I also for the first time checked from Steam how many hours I have put in NBA 2K22. I am playing it with PC as you probably figured out from that last sentence where I mentioned Steam. I have played this game for 90 hours.  already described my progression in this game in the last post to this blog.

A while ago I stopped playing Gran Turismo 7. I played it maybe 40 hours. As you can figure I have played a lot this year already. After this I figured I should get into some driving games for PS4. I saw a nice discount so I bought Wreckfest and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered. I also got F1 2021.

Hot Pursuit is a remasterd version of the game that was released in 2010. There were also some NFS games published earlier and they were also called Hot Pursuit. The comncept here is clear. You decide which side of the law you are on. So you can choose to be a police or a racer.

I have already enjoyed playing this racing game for about 30 hours. At first I was a bit disappointed. I thought the game wasn’t realistic. Driving the same circuit for 50 times seemed very repetitive to me. And you didn’t progress much. I had played as a racer so I decided to try playing as a police.

Playing Need For Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered as a police is very fun. You basically try to drive as fast as you can, bust some racers and utilize means like using a spike strip, helicopter or road block to capture some racers. This play mode saves my experience. As NFS Hot Pursuit Remastered is not a realistic or enjoyable as a racing game it can be a nice experience as a game.

As it figures there’s too few hours for me to play every good game, be it a racing one or not. So I haven’t even opened Wreckfest or F1 2021. I have just been too busy lately. These games aren’t even the newest ones. As my dreams of getting myself a Xbox Series X seem to fade I have started to think about expanding my Series S’s memory. I just don’t know if there’s anything good and new to play.

Picking up what to play next is very common issue for me as a gamer. Thank you for reading. I try to write some more. I have a holiday of two weeks coming soon so maybe I catch you then. Maybe a bit earlier. Let’s find out!